Residents of Yam Island in the Torres Strait have held protests calling for aid after high tides forced evacuations yesterday. Photos and videos posted on social media showed severe flooding of streets and houses, while a $25 million seawall on nearby Saibai Island was also breached. Speaking to the Cairns Post, Torres Strait Island Regional Council Mayor Fred Gela said council-owned homes built in a low-lying area were at risk, and that “tidal predictions for the next 30-60 years say that area will be completely underwater”. Emergency services minister Craig Crawford conceded that “we are having sea level rises occurring across the globe”, saying residents may be eligible for disaster relief aid.

Former prime minister Kevin Rudd is suing the ABC after the broadcaster reported he was warned of “critical risks” in the then-Labor government’s home insulation program in 2009. On Tuesday the ABC published reports of Cabinet documents alleging that Rudd, then-deputy prime minister Julia Gillard and other members of the so-called “Gang of Four” senior cabinet team were warned of risks inherent in the insulation scheme, although the nature of the risks were not specified. In a statement, Rudd said “the report by the ABC alleging I ignored warnings on risks to the safety of installers of home insulation is a lie”. Rudd claimed the documents in question were viewed by the royal commission into the scheme in 2014, which cleared him of any wrongdoing. ASIO officers secured the files on Thursday, escorting them out of the ABC’s Canberra offices in locked safes that hopefully won’t turn up at a suburban garage sale anytime soon.

Labor MP David Feeney has resigned from Parliament, triggering a byelection in the inner Melbourne seat of Batman that could see Labor lose the seat to The Greens. Feeney resigned after failing to produce proof that he renounced his dual British citizenship before the 2016 federal election, saying he was standing aside to make way for a candidate that could give “150 per cent of their effort, their commitment and their passion”. Former Australian Council of Trade Unions secretary Ged Kearney is firming as Labor’s likely candidate, while The Greens will run ex-candidate Alex Bhathal. Feeney held Batman by just 2 per cent in 2016, and The Greens convincingly won the overlapping state seat of Northcote in November 2017.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull is officially Australia’s single largest political donor, according to new electoral donations disclosures published yesterday. Turnbull donated $1,750,000 to the federal Liberal Party in late 2016. Federal donation disclosure laws only required the Australian Electoral Commission to publish details from the 2016-2017 financial year yesterday, allowing individuals and companies to make large donations without the details becoming public for up to 19 months. The Commonwealth Bank, ANZ, PwC, Wesfarmers Limited, Star Entertainment Group, Bluescope Steel and the Macquarie Group were among a large number of companies that made significant donations to both major parties.

And British MPs will move out of the Houses of Parliament in Westminster Palace for at least six years to allow for £3.5 billion of urgent repairs to the historic complex. A Guardian report in December detailed how Westminster had fallen into a state of dangerous disrepair, compounded by political reluctance to spend taxpayer money on refurbishing MP’s offices in an age of austerity. MPs narrowly voted to temporarily relocate Parliament for a “full decant” of Westminster, expected to begin sometime in the 2020s. It will be the first time Parliament has moved since the Blitz in the 1940s.

“Some 70 per­cent of the 4,176 people who responded to an Out­side survey for this story reported that they’d been harassed in the outdoors or while working in the outdoor industry. I eventually talked to or exchanged e-mail with 80 such people, representing nearly every sport that the magazine has covered in its 40-year history. I spoke with women who were sexually harassed or assaulted at ski races, at mountain-bike events, while trekking overseas, at gear companies, even while reporting about the outdoors.” outside

“Being unfamiliar with Peter Brock is pretty much unthinkable to Australian auto racing fans, but for much of the rest of the world, that’s the sorry state we live in. This is a shame, not just because Peter Brock was a truly gifted driver and ran a great factory-approved tuning company, but because the story of his downfall is truly fascinating, and involves a box of crystals and epoxy that tap into mythical orgone energy. Seriously.” jalopnik

“Most skincare is really just a waste of money. The invisible investments are of a kind with today’s boring rich. Rich people used to build castles and museums; today they buy clunky smartwatches and personalized vitamins. Those with disposable income would, before we all lost our minds, buy books or art or beautiful shoes or literally anything that gives more pleasure than another useless exfoliant.” the outline

“Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton says the public should help select judges and magistrates in state courts, leaving the door open to the direct election of judges ... ‘Frankly, the state governments should be putting out publicly the names of people that they’re believing they should appoint to the magistrates court and let there be public reflection on that’, he told 2GB radio’s Ray Hadley.” fairfax

“Most voters do not know their judges, so party affiliation and having a good name count for much more on the ballot paper than the quality of the candidate’s decisions ... Since people often vote for the same party the whole way down the ballot, in races where judges must be party members they can find themselves slung out for reasons that bear no relation to judging.” the economist (from 2014)

“Perhaps the best way to know how our elected officials really feel about the future of this country is to stare into their eyes as they’re forced to sit through President Trump’s first State of the Union. Is there a cunning resolve behind their golf clap? (Mike Pence.) A deep faith in who is actually in charge? (Paul Ryan.) Or seething anger? (Nancy Pelosi.)” the cut

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Competition:

Win tickets to the opening of The Exhibition Project

The Saturday Paper invites NSW readers to enter the draw to win one of 20 invitations to the opening of The Exhibition Project at City Recital Hall in Sydney on Thursday, February 8. The Exhibition Project, developed by The Other Art Fair presented by Saatchi Art, showcases the talents of young and emerging artists. Simply email your name and phone number to [email protected]. Entries will close at 11.59pm AEDT on Sunday, February 4 and winners will be notified by Monday, February 5.

Mike Seccombe
After two High Court decisions, the fight against federal funding for religious-only school chaplains is set to end with a test case on state anti-discrimination law.You can’t pay someone to break the law, which is what the Victorian government is now doing. And they can’t say, ‘Well, the federal government is paying us to break the law.’

Kate Iselin
The Victorian Liberal Party’s state council has, ahead of this year’s election, endorsed the ‘Nordic model’ to transform sex work laws, but European experiences suggest it can have devastating consequences for workers.

Rebecca Harkins-Cross
She’s a writer whose plays have been widely lauded by critics but largely neglected by the mainstream. Now Patricia Cornelius’s work will take its place on the main stage. “It sounds so hifalutin, but my ambition was really just to be able to create great work … that I felt soared. It never entered my mind that it would happen in the mainstream.”

Annie Smithers
I came across this recipe some years ago and it has become my favourite to move on to once I’m over the ‘sweet’ quince thing. It features Persian overtones, Moroccan influences and rich flavours that are perfect as the nights get colder.

Guy Rundle
The massive expansion of the tertiary sector during the Dawkins era, and the elision of tech institutes and universities, set us off on the wild ride we are still on. Resistance by the humanities was greeted with exemplary punishment – the cheapest courses to teach, they were crowded with tens of thousands of new students and deprived of the funding to cater for them. The problem is worse in Australia than almost anywhere else. Had we a real respect for universities and what they do, the successive depredation of them would have given us a May ’68 redux by now. Instead, the machine hums on.

Paul Bongiorno
The fact is Labor senator Katy Gallagher referred herself to the High Court as a test case for “reasonable steps”. Turnbull’s attack on Shorten for gaming the system is very rich given he argued that Barnaby Joyce was eligible until the court declared otherwise. Joyce remained deputy prime minister and sat in the parliament for 74 days even though he was under a cloud. There is no real substance to the demands that the members now facing the voters again should apologise for the inconvenience and expense the byelections will cost. In all their cases, their good faith is established by their genuine efforts to comply with section 44, according to serious legal advice, which was clearly not the case with the politicians who were bundled out of the parliament last year.

Richard Ackland
This week Gadfly thinks it’s high time to unload some festering snipes and snarls. Take the Australian Press Council as a starting point. The press “regulator” is in the process of rissoling the Indigenous woman Carla McGrath as a public member of the council, on the feeble excuse that her position as deputy chair of GetUp! creates a conflict of interest. What on earth are they on about? The Press Council itself is a conflict of interest, riddled with tired hacks representing their paymasters in the media.

Even the farmers admit it is an increment – the decision by Malcolm Turnbull’s government not to ban live exports over summer, despite evidence of the risk to animals, despite footage of mass deaths and calls from vets to end the trade.The truth is, this is an industry of undue political clout. There are economic arguments against live exports, good ones. There are obvious welfare arguments, too.

Martin McKenzie-Murray
Though the unusual manner in which Aaron Cockman spoke of the alleged murderer of his children and ex-wife – his former father-in-law – was puzzling to many, psychological studies of similar crimes suggest a way to make sense of its seeming contradictions.